SANTA CLARA, Calif. \u2013 Football is a game of inches, an idiom the Raiders cruelly learned in their first trip back to The Bay area since 2018.<\/p>\n
The final score of 38-17 doesn’t adequately tell the story of how tightly the Raiders played the 49ers, blundering away several opportunities to close the gap and even potentially come from behind.<\/p>\n
Yet, it was a disastrous and quite confusing second-half showing from the Raiders offense which consisted of five turnovers to the 49ers. The field position of the turnovers was even more damning, with three of them coming in field goal territory.<\/p>\n
“The game has to be balanced,” said Raiders head coach Klint Kubiak postgame. “You can be a running and throwing team [and] when you’re throwing it every time, that’s not easy.”<\/p>\n
The reasoning behind a heavy passing offense is the continual problem of stopping or producing a rushing attack.<\/p>\n
The Raiders defense couldn’t catch their breath, as the 49ers ran the ball up the middle at will. Their first drive consisted of Christian McCaffrey, Kyle Juszczyk and Kaelon Black averaging 5.3 yards a carry. McCaffrey punched it in from the 1-yard line for the first score of the game.<\/p>\n
On their second touchdown drive, Brock Purdy scrambled for 32 yards, with d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu setting in as the 49ers quarterback also scored from the 1-yard line, taking an early 14-0 lead.<\/p>\n
The 49ers rushed for 94 yards before the second quarter began. In totality, the 49ers outgained the Raiders in rushing yardage, 190-24.<\/p>\n
“You got to be tied together,” said defensive end Maxx Crosby. “At the back end and the linebackers as well, it’s communication, it’s leveraging the formation. Several things that tie into stopping the run. It’s not just one player, it’s got to be all 11. All hands on deck.”<\/p>\n
Making up for lost time, Kirk Cousins started stretching the field, completing four passes to four different players for 48 yards. With the help of Michael Mayer pushing from behind, Cousins sneaked into the end zone from the 1-yard line, his second straight week with a rushing touchdown.<\/p>\n
Yet the problems against the run started transferring over against the pass game for the Raiders. San Francisco’s offense quickly stormed back down the field, with Purdy identifying a wide-open McCaffrey while being blitzed for a 12-yard touchdown. A 50-yard field goal from Matt Gay made it 21-10 going into halftime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SANTA CLARA, Calif. \u2013 Football is a game of inches, an idiom the Raiders cruelly learned in their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1049716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2065],"tags":[7,268,269,1744,393,135445,2455,2454,6,525],"class_list":["post-1049715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-las-vegas-raiders","tag-football","tag-home-centerpiece","tag-home-latest-stories","tag-las-vegas","tag-las-vegas-raiders","tag-las-vegas-raiders-at-san-francisco-49ers-2026-reg-9","tag-lasvegas","tag-lasvegasraiders","tag-nfl","tag-raiders"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/117584206464730950","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1049715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1049716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1049715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1049715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1049715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}